Monday, 14 September 2026
Appealing false AI attribution for the self-published novel- ALIEN : Broken Covenants
Authors beware- Original content creators have minimal recourse when self-publishing platforms falsely attribute their novels to be “using artificial intelligence" in writing or illustrations.
On the upside, our first edition's softcopy is now a collector's item for its select purchasers!
Authors can face serious obstacles when their self-published books become withdrawn from international retail due to false allegations of artificial intelligence (AI) being used in its creation. Simultaneously, there may be reasons that are concealed, since authors do not receive any specifics on what the identified breaches are. Nor is there any transparency in the appeal process. Authors are not alerted upfront that their original content may enjoy no due process or recourse in response to false accusations of AI use. If their ISBN listing is withdrawn, the ISBN may be lost, plus there is no third-party, such as a publishing ombudsman, that one can appeal to for support. By contrast, genuine authors should merit transparent reporting and a fair appeal process as their online publishers’ clients. Such protection seems necessary given that AI’s identification of false positives is not uncommon.
I have shared the case below as it may strongly resonate with other authors’ experiences of false AI bans. It follows my appeal's success against a false flag by AI following the first edition of Create With Cape Town's ALIEN : Broken Covenants becoming automatically withdrawn from online retail. While I eventually found a way to successfully appeal this, the long-wait prompted the creative collaborators to submit a second edition for a new ISBN:
Create With Cape Town’s fan-fiction novel, ALIEN : Broken Covenants was pulled by Ingram Spark from international distribution via online retailers in June, 2026. Previously listed by Blurb under the ISBN 9798349827167 internationally (via Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc) and locally (takealot, etc.), this book’s softcopy is now unavailable. Its delisting followed Ingram Spark identifying AI's use in preparing some the book’s content. As per themessage I received from Blurb Distribution Services: "Your book has not been accepted for global distribution, as it has been identified as containing content generated using artificial intelligence or mass-produced processes. Please note that this goes against section 11.1 (vii) of our Terms & Conditions: https://www.blurb.com/terms. Books containing AI-generated content will no longer be accepted into Ingram distribution. Moreover, future violations may result in your Blurb account closure.” (email- 5 June, 2026)
In response to this lengthy submission, Blurb requested that our novel should be revised to remove any AI content, then resubmitted for review by IngramSpark. Blurb did not supply any specifics for why the novel received this notice and was withdrawn. Consequently, a CATCH 22 situation emerged. Robert, Rupert and I knew that its content was not generated by AI. So, resubmitting the same book to Blurb unchanged would almost certainly lead to Ingenta's false flagging of AI content simply reoccurring! Alternatively, we three could attempt to guess the least original illustrations and text, then modify them. However, if these guesses proved unsuccessful, this would be a wasted effort, as we would be no wiser with Blurb and IngramSpark’s opaque processes.
I have shared the case below as it may strongly resonate with other authors’ experiences of false AI bans. It follows my appeal's success against a false flag by AI following the first edition of Create With Cape Town's ALIEN : Broken Covenants becoming automatically withdrawn from online retail. While I eventually found a way to successfully appeal this, the long-wait prompted the creative collaborators to submit a second edition for a new ISBN:
Broken Covenants' softcopy gets removed from online retail
An in-depth reply to Blurb Distribution Services
I replied to this ticket: "Hello, (Blurb Distribution Services). This book is an original work of fan fiction that was published in June, 2025, and distributed via IngramSpark shortly afterwards. My company Create With Cape Town (CWCT) commissioned the author Robert Walcott to write it in December 2023, with Rupert Dolby supplying visual inspiration via concept illustrations he began work on from 2022.
This book was resubmitted after two missing sentences were spotted by Robert Walcott, but IngramSpark served Blurb with a Catalog Integrity Notice on the 5th of June. This was surprising as none of the book’s prior content had been changed since its original submission.
None of us have used AI in the course of plotting, writing or designing this novel. It is a wholly original production of fan fiction by our team. Robert Walcot writes; ‘The book’s text and each chapter’s plot were created solely by me. AI was not used in any capacity during the creation and development of this book. To me, the creative process is a sacred covenant between myself (storyteller) and the reader. Therefore, I take great pride in the knowledge that my authorial voice cannot be replicated by AI. Thank you for your attention.’ And Rupert Dolby states; ‘As the illustrator and visual designer of Broken Covenants, I can assure you that none of the artwork is AI generated. The illustrations have been developed by myself over a period of years. This work is not AI generated from a few key words to a final image in one step. To prove this I am happy to supply initial rough sketches and then the multiple iterations of each illustration to show development.’
I can also confirm that I have not used AI in plotting this fan fiction work. It is intended to provide an original, speculative narrative for Sir Ridley Scott’s incomplete ALIEN movie prequel. The third film in this trilogy was never made. We are currently working on a follow-up book that will involve original world-building by sharing David 8’s development of a synth civilisation and a completely new one, a First Civilisation of bio-mechanoids.
I hereby supply two images as proof that our original project has been worked on for a few years:
1) CWCT first Contracted Robert (redacted) in December 2023. He worked at lengthy intervals, which should suggest that he has not used AI to speed up his work. (screenshot redacted)
2) Studio Dolby began working on illustrations for CWCT from November, 2021. These were intended to flesh out CWCT's world-building for a synthetic civilisation in ALIEN, serving as inspiration for Robert. Attached is an example of how Rupert built up an illustration for Chapter 11. He followed the same process for all other chapters.
Should more proof be needed, I can meet with BDS online for sharing similarly salient material from my work desk that will confirm our project is entirely the product of human creativity (e.g. creative briefs, written documents, illustrated source). We did not use AI in producing ALIEN : Broken Covenants, and any finding to the contrary is a false positive by IngramSpark distribution.
In terms of “mass-produced processes”, I cannot find what this means in Blurb’s contract, nor via searching its website? Should this relate to fan fiction produced in relation to major franchises, our work does not infringe on the copyright of the franchise owner. The trademark and copyright attorney, Roy Taberer, read the book and confirmed that it falls under fair use as an original work. Furthermore, the book features a legal disclaimer regarding this. CWCT has not received any complaints from the franchise-holder, such as take-down requests.
On the contrary, there is positive feedback from fans, who were disappointed that ALIEN Covenant’s trilogy was never completed.
I trust that the information here is sufficient to argue for our novel’s reinstatement?
Thanks for any assistance in resolving this unfair decision."
Blurb advises book must be resubmitted
After tactfully flagging this, I asked Blurb Distribution Services for a contact at IngramSpark to query this false flag and/or make an appeal, but no contact was provided. While I offered to address any clearly identified, legitimate concerns, no genuine ones were.
Submitting an appeal via IngramSpark Support
IngramSpark is the service Blurb uses to allocate ISBN numbers via Bowker, which enables books to be globally distributed. Blurb owns the ISBN 9798349827167 for ALIEN : Broken Covenants, and was the first point of appeal.
I then created a free IngramSpark account to lodge a second appeal. The following (limited to 700 characters) was submitted on 26th of June: "This book is the result of over three years work by my Create With Cape Town (CWCT) business, the author Robert Walcott and illustrator Rupert Dolby. None of us have used AI in the course of plotting, writing or designing this novel. It is the first to provide an original, speculative narrative for Sir Ridley Scott’s incomplete ALIEN movie prequel. The third film in his trilogy was never made. Blurb Distribution Services published our work of fan fiction in June, 2025. Blurb could not supply us with details on why our was withdrawn by IngramSpark. Do let us know why, so that we might fix this?"
Eventually, the Ingram Content Group's Support responded to this appeal on the 22nd of July by just stating: "Thank you for reaching out requesting an appeal. It appears your title is already enabled and active through our global distribution network!" While this seemed a positive development, Blurb only listed a PDF for sale on its site. Our novel would still need to be resubmitted via Blurb to become available for purchase in softback format via Ingram Spark's online retailers.
Alien : Broken Covenants, 2nd edition
Our original novel was first published in May, 2025. Our experience with the false AI attribution flagging suggested that we should add an AI disclaimer to our book. With our trademark attorney shifting to an international firm, plus minor text corrections, we decided to update the novel to a second edition. It's now published to https://www.blurb.com/b/12997217-alien-broken-covenants with a revised cover. We hope it will be made available to purchase as a softcopy soon under its new ISBN.
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| Alien : Broken Covenants 2nd edition cover (Studio Dolby, 2026) |
On the upside, our first edition's softcopy is now a collector's item for its select purchasers!
Concerning false-AI-positives
False positives by detectors for AI content are a well-documented problem, with varied AI detectors delivering conflicting results (The Authors Guild, 2026). It seems unethical to falsely accuse authors of using AI without providing them with sufficient detail to support a proper right-to-reply. This should include publishers' disclosing their methodology (especially the tool, its version, and detail on which texts and illustrations are claimed to use AI).
As our example demonstrates, there is minimal transparency during Blurb or Ingram Spark's appeal process. Instead, the AI content flagging process seems to assume guilt with no direction on what aspect of our work featured AI creation.
A publisher should also provide a transparent appeals with an ombudsman that authors can approach to review the publisher's process and designs. In our case, the appeals process can take weeks to resolve. Meanwhile, Create With Cape Town lost reputation as Blurb's book link redirected visitors to a completely different Blurb title for all the links we created. We also lost book sales, too. There is no redress process from Ingram Spark or Blurb to recoup damages. Client beware: When an AI check delivers false AI attribution for your work, you'll pay!
In addition to false positives, an inscrutable ‘black box’ AI system may support other forms of abuse. The complete lack of transparency leads to speculation as to the motives of Blurb and IngramSpark, denting their brands. And it could even be claimed that 'AI attribution check' may be clandestinely fulfilling powerful franchise-holders' copyright protection interests. Could Disney and 20th Century Studios be exerting indirect influence via AI detectors for suppressing fair use of original Alien™️ fan fiction productions amongst other trademarks? Without transparency, I cannot tell.
It's a pity that Ingram Spark's authors cannot access an ‘explainable AI’ (XAI) to directly interrogate the logic behind its GPT detector's AI attribution decision. This could potentially allay such mis-founded fears through providing a way for authors to understand the AI (mis-)attribution's logic, and what its potential errors were. In our case, may be that our science fiction style is just too well-written (Liang et al. 2023). Thanks, Rob! While Studio Dolby's illustrations inevitably reference seminal aesthetic elements from Alien™️, these are largely presented in original contexts. As its fans can spot on this Pinterest board!
Archive of Our Own (AO3)'s flags content correctly
As a contra-example showing how to do it properly, AO3 sent me a 'Warning: Commercial Promotion Violation' email. An anonymous party had reported Alien : Broken Covenants for being in breach. Perhaps not-so-surprisingly close to media reports covering Sir Ridley Scott plans for complete his Alien prequel by returning David 8 within a twofer's mooted sequel to Alien : Romulus!
AO3's email was crystal clear about the areas of infringement and how they should be fixed, before our book might be reinstated- "The AO3 Policy & Abuse committee has received a complaint that one of your works contains references to commercial activities:
"ALIEN Broken Covenants", located at https://archiveofourown.org/works/64030441
This is a violation of Section II.C of our Terms of Service, which states: "Promotion, solicitation, and advertisement of commercial products or activities are not allowed." This includes any mention of commercial sites (e.g. Amazon), paid memberships or donations (e.g. Patreon or Ko-fi), sales, paid commissions, or any other language which one might interpret as requesting or having requested financial contributions, whether for yourself or others. For more examples of commercial activities, please refer to our Terms of Service FAQ: https://archiveofourown.org/tos_faq#commercial_examples
We have determined that the following content is commercial in nature:
- Visit https://www.createwith.net/alien-ebook-download to see soft copy order OR epub and PDF download options. Buy a soft copy from Blurb at https://www.blurb.com/b/12456220-alien-broken-covenants or order via online book retailers. Use the book's ISBN 9798349827167 to search on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and others. We appreciate your support, as we work on a sequel.
- 3 Also available as a free e-pub and PDF via createwith.net
- Also available as a free e-pub and PDF via createwith.net
- To enjoy the free novel in its optimal layout, download the e-publication (e-pub) and/or portable document (pdf) file versions from ebook-download/" rel="nofollow">www.createwith.net/alien-ebook-download.
- Broken Covenants was sponsored by Crafty Pixels T/A Create With Cape Town™️ CC, established 2008, ©️ 2025.
- Create With welcomes well-justified criticism for improving this novel before its first dropshipped version completes production. Readers alerting us to major errors will be eligible for a complimentary hardcopy of the drop-shipped first edition after it's linked from https://www.createwith.net.
- The moral rights of this creative work’s author, illustrator and sponsor are hereby asserted.
However, this is not necessarily a comprehensive list. It is your responsibility to ensure that your account and the works posted on it are in compliance with our Terms of Service.
We have hidden the work and require you to edit out all instances of commercial promotion within 7 days. You can access the hidden work using the link provided above. If you don't sufficiently edit your work by this deadline, an AO3 administrator will delete the work. Otherwise, your work will be unhidden after the deadline.
A warning has been placed on your account as a result of this violation. We recommend that you review your account and ensure your other works are in compliance with our Terms of Service. If you do not remove all violating content, or if you violate the Terms of Service again, you may be temporarily or permanently suspended.
For more information about content and behaviors that are not permitted on AO3, and the penalties you may receive for a violation, please refer to our Content Policy and Terms of Service FAQ:
If you have any questions, or if you wish to appeal this decision, please reply to this email." (email, 2nd of September, 2026).
I quickly replied to AO3 Policy & Abuse with, “Thank you for giving me the opportunity to remedy the commercial promotion infringements. As requested, I've removed the flagged content from our book’s description and background content in Chapter 18’s end. I trust that none of the remaining content will be in breach of AO3’s terms, and am committed to promptly fixing any other examples that your team spotlights."
AO3's Policy & Abuse committee approved of my fixes quickly- unhiding our novel by the next day. This was a pleasing contrast versus Blurb and IngramSpark's opaque and lengthy appeals processes.
False AI attribution- a nascent research field
With my researcher cap on, the topic of false AI attribution flags against writing and illustrations in authors' self-published novels seems a potential new scholarship opportunity. Hopefully, our case may have some value for scholarship and be referenced by this nascent field's scholars' in the future....
Monday, 4 May 2026
A few user experience improvements for Academia.edu to consider
Written for the future benefit of academia.edu's users, should the front-end developers at Academia Inc address my unsolicited suggestions! Updated- 7 August, 2026.
Dear Dr Richard Price and whom else it may concern, below are some issues that academia.edu should address to provide a better service for subscribers like yours truly.
1. A route to see the citations flagged in Academia Manuscript alerts
It can be exciting to learn that one's work is cited in an email alert (see Figure 1). |
| Figure 1. Academia.edu Mentions - claim your citation email alert (screenshot in author's Mail, 2026) |
In stark contrast, it's underwhelming that the 'View your Citation' button's link simply takes one to one's personal academia.edu stream, versus that specific mention*. This would not be so irritating, if your subscriber could then follow a route under Mentions to spot the specific, flagged citation. Or at least have the option to view citations for the mentioned article, rather than scrolling through many that one has already reviewed. Without efficient navigation routes for reviewing a specific article's citation, such emails can be interpreted as clickbait targeted to drive visits. It's certainly not an alert that is easy for users to act on with many unverified citations.
* I appreciate that the non-specific link may be caused by Mimecast's security checks in my university email address. This creates a long link, e.g. https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/url=https%3A%2F%2Furl.za.m.mimecastprotect.com%2Fs%2FyPrKCDREy2sANNPXuWfrUjI5xu%3Fdomain%3Dacademia.edu&data=05%7C02%7Cusername%40cput.ac.za%7Cbb1bb20f47b74b5fc07d08dea9ab2ffe%7C90bb22dba73a4971b7d67ca3ef90cf06%7C0%7C0%7C639134749886270150%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=l4AQJ8IKnUYPhIT%2Bc0IxBQD1Q3fN3BbtQfbWpsqmYks%3D&reserved=0.
Given that this is likely to be happening for many academic email addresses, providing a workaround for users to locate the exact citation would be helpful to them.
2. A route to better identify one's mentions vs. those whose initial(s) and surname match
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| Figure 2. Screenshot of academia.edu identifying mentions of T Noakes (2026) |
Being the son of a prolific Emeritus Professor whose first initial I share, my experience is admittedly an outlier's. But while this issue may not affect many of your users, the current identifying Mentions route shown in Figure 2 will be highly inefficient for those impacted unfortunates. In my case, I would appreciate having the option to preclude all outputs that originated before my publication record began from 2011. Hopefully, this would substantially cut down the 6,000 odd mentions I still "need" to review! Then, for those that remain, it would be good to have a mass selection option for 'This is not me', rather than slowly doing them one-by-one to get closer to my Google Scholar citations profile that shows just over 200. As you can appreciate, that's a lot of 'This is not me' still to identify 😅...
3. Add a 'This is fake!' button to report hallucinated references and fake outputs
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| Figure 3. Screenshot of the 'This is me' and 'This is not me' button choices on academia.edu (2026) |
4. Consolidate to reduce Academia.edu's email overload
Figure 4. Screenshot of Academia.edu emails, 16 - 25 April (2026)
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| Figure 4. Screenshot of Academia.edu emails, 16 - 25 April (2026) |
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| Figure 5. Screenshot of Academia.edu emails, 2 - 14 April (2026) |
Academia.edu provides an extensive range of notification options to select from under one's Account > Email Notifications. Despite disabling many options, I receive almost daily email correspondence. For example, Figures 4 and 5 consolidate all the email alerts received for April. Do consider offering the option to consolidate alerts for; General Announcements, Your Network, Analytics, Discussions, Your Papers and Other Emails all into a weekly update. This alternative is preferable to unsubscribing from communications that may be helpful, but seem far too frequent.
5. Support easy reporting of article duplicates
Since each academia.edu author can upload a co-authored paper, it is relatively easy for multiple records to be created for the same manuscript. |
| Figure 6. Screenshot of four duplicate records for the same article by one author under Academia.edu's My Mentions |
These doppelgängers become very obvious when Academia.edu's My Mentions is organised by 'Recency'. Multiple records for same article are then shown underneath each other (as per Figure 6's example for a sole-authored paper that strangely has four records), so are hard to miss. It would be helpful if there was a tickbox to select such records and suggest that they be merged.
6. Flag co-authors names that are missing-in-action
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| Figure 7. Screenshot of academia.edu article edit showing all four co-authors being credited (2026) ... |
It is possible for co-authors to be added in a research output's edited record, but not be shown in that output's listing. An example of this is shown in Figure 7, where four article co-authors are credited, but only two are shown under the article's listing (see Figure 8).
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| Figure 8. ... but only two authors are shown under the title for the same Academia.edu record (2026) |
There should be an option to report on academia.edu that co-authors' names are missing-in-action through not being displayed for a particular output. This may in turn assist Academia.edu in cleaning up separate records for the same research output.
7. Offer citation exports for popular referencing file formats
Please shift from offering only a 'cut-and-paste' referencing option to supporting downloadable references. It would be helpful for researchers to be able to export citations in popular referencing file formats, such as RIS (.ris), BibTeX (.bib) and EndNote XML (.xml).
8. Provide a reporting option for incorrect titles of one's paper(s) when identifying citations
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| Figure 9. Screenshot of academia.edu page for claiming authorship that shows three wrong article titles (2026) |
Figure 9 purports to show three new citations of my co-authored papers. However, they are very confusing and I do not have the option of flagging the following issues: The top purported citation for i) 'A role for qualitative methods in researching Twitter data on a popular science article's communication' is presented as citing 'Engagement in structured social space: an investigation of teachers’ online peer-to-peer interaction' with "cited". However when I click on the work cited OR citing output, academia.edu links directly to a different co-authored chapter at ii.) Online content creation: looking at students’ social media practices through a Connected Learning lens).
At least the second and third links do take me to the citing works (Empowering Learning Through Networked and Connected Education and The readiness and challenges of lecturers in adopting social media platforms as a teaching and learning tool during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak). The former's bibliography confirms that (ii) was in fact cited, while the latter cites our (iii) initial article's republication as a chapter.
Since all three seemingly link under the title for a completely different publication ('Engagement in structured social space: an investigation of teachers’ online peer-to-peer interaction' by James Robson, 2015), it would be helpful for users to have the option to flag such incorrect titles being displayed for their cited works!
9. Stop asking subscribers to identify blank "citations"
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| Figure 10. Screenshot of academia.edu request to identify a blank, unlinked mention |
The five blank citations shown in Figure 10. are impossible to select whether 'This is me' or not, particularly since they also do not link to the citation's source for checking against 🙄.
Thanks in advance for considering these suggestions, Academia.Inc and academia.edu.
Readers, kindly add any additional suggestions in the comments below, thanks.
Saturday, 14 February 2026
A research article’s digital cul-de-sac. How to fix an academic paper that is hidden and/or unreachable
Written for researchers keen to understand potential obstacles to their articles not being readily searchable via academic indexes and search engines thanks to broken linkages, a metadata mismatch or non-submission. Updated- 22 March 2026
Most researchers are keen for their works to be well-indexed, quick-to-find, and reliably linked to their academic publisher’s landing page from search engine results. This is especially true for scholars whose performance reviews include consideration of their works’ impact in reaching interested readers. Such impact scores can include citations, amplification and readership, as tracked via altmetrics and other sources.
However, each author was unable to select this listing for automatic addition, despite entering the assigned DOI index number, the full handle.net address (Figure 10) or the journal's URL.
Instead, I shared a screenshot of the details I used (Figure 11) which each author copied for adding the same details.
The primary responsibility for submitting and maintaining Crossref entries typically lies with the publisher in being formal Crossref members. CRIMSA publishes Acta Criminologica : African Journal of Criminology & Victimology. The editor ensures that high-quality metadata (such as ORCIDs and funding info) is received from authors before manuscript approval. CRIMSA would then be responsible for submitting accepted articles' bibliographic metadata (including URLs and references, plus registering DOIs), then ensuring this information remains up-to-date. The publisher handles the technical side of generating "Crossref XML" files, or using deposit tools.
If there is a problem, it is most likely to be taking place in the earliest phase of the Research Data Lifecycle (RDLC)- this broad concept is used to describe the "cradle-to-grave" journey of research data:
However, until this happens, authors keen to share their Acta Criminologica publications via their scholarly profiles and social networks must do a lot of extra work. My colleagues and I followed work-arounds to address the placeholder DOI index information in phases 2 to 4. These included listing their article's and/or handle.net address in manual entries on ORCID's centralised registry, academic aggregators (e.g. Google Scholar or Bielefeld Academic Search Engine). Plus, shifting to using the handle.net address in academic social network posts. These work-arounds required extra labour from the four authors, three of whom are independent and not formally affiliated to any university. As the journal publisher already covers the journal's Crossref fees, such extra work can readily be avoided. Hopefully, the journal will put aside the resources necessary for generating the required XML metadata, and for depositing its full archive, plus new publications via Crossref's record manager.
N.B. Kindly add a comment below if you have any related suggestions or other feedback...
Most researchers are keen for their works to be well-indexed, quick-to-find, and reliably linked to their academic publisher’s landing page from search engine results. This is especially true for scholars whose performance reviews include consideration of their works’ impact in reaching interested readers. Such impact scores can include citations, amplification and readership, as tracked via altmetrics and other sources.
This post provides an example to illustrate why a research author should not assume that every article of theirs will be properly indexed. As result, this work may not be seen by potentially interested parties searching for pertinent work with salient keywords, despite the work's merits. Metadata mismatches and broken linkages can unwittingly emerge during academic publishing, and may persist if not checked, flagged, and corrected. This post gives helpful advice for correcting or working around a few key problems. It shares the practical example of errors that impacted a South African journal article's availability after its digital publication on the 1st of December, 2025:
'Brandjacked for social media advert fraud'- a ghost in the fog...
The first publication from a research project that began in 2021, Brandjacked for social media advert fraud: Microcelebrities' experiences of digital crime, was published in the Acta Criminologica: African Journal of Criminology & Victimology journal. Ordinarily, new articles should only take a few weeks after being indexed by an an academic metadata aggregator, such as Crossref, before featuring on authors' academic profiles. Crossref can update researchers' ORCID and Google Scholar records, followed by listings on academic social networks. These may be preceded by results in search engines and in Artificial Intelligence results (such as Grok). While search results for Brandjacked were quickly available from the last two, it could not be found under any of the former by February, 2026.
This post explores such challenges, the root cause of the article not being be properly indexed for academic searches, plus the work-arounds that Brandjacked's authors followed. While their paper technically existed, it could not efficiently be shared online by the four co-authors, with some listing results defaulting to a 'page not found' error message, rather than the publisher's article landing page:
Multiple URLs as expected
A normal part of the academic publishing process sees several URLs being created for a particular publication. In Brandjacked's case, these are from the handle.net domain (pointing to hdl.handle.net/10520/ejc-crim_v38_n3_a2) and journals.co.za's (onto journals.co.za/doi/10.10520/ejc-crim_v38_n3_a2). Sabinet African Journals (journals.co.za) is a searchable platform providing a comprehensive, full-text collection for over 600 African-published electronic journals. Handle.net is developed by the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI) to support a distributed information system for persistent, unique, and actionable identifiers (handles) for digital objects over the internet. The Handle System is the underlying technology used by the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) setup for identifying content, particularly for digital publishing and commerce.
Brandjacked's DOI value changed post-publication
A DOI is a unique, permanent alphanumeric string that is assigned to digital objects. DOIs include a prefix always starting with 10 and a suffix, separated by a forward slash (/). Prefacing the DOI with doi.org creates an actionable link. Originally, the Brandjacked article was allocated the DOI 10.10520/ejc-crim_v2025_nse1_a2. However, this was subsequently changed to 10.10520/ejc-crim_v38_n3_a2 to reflect the article’s publication as the second in the 38th volume’s third issue. Commonly linked to journal articles, books, and research datasets, each DOI should provide a stable, long-lasting link to a research output’s internet location, regardless of whether its online address [or Uniform Research Location (URL)] gets changed.
Social media shares…
On social media, academics, researchers and scholars typically share the DOI version of URLs, since a DOI's usage is the primary identifier for tracking comments and mentions via altmetrics. Attention for academic publications is typically sparse, with most not being shared via social media, and a significant portion only being shared once via popular platforms. Only a few papers, often with high public interest or "quirky" topics, receive the vast majority of shares. To help Brandjacked's visibility, I wrote a 31 tweet long thread at x.com/travisnoakes/status/2001585342000898177, shared a LinkedIn post at linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7407406366052569089/, and wrote this public Facebook post at facebook.com/share/p/1BtsXaJtQC/.
… but no AltMetrics listing yet
On the Brandjacked article’s landing page, the altmetrics badge only shows a question mark at the date of this post's publication (see Figure 1 below).
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| Figure 1. Screenshot of No AltMetrics listing for Brandjacked article,12 Feb 2026. |
Nor are results for the Brandjacked article shown on app.dimensions.ai/discover/publication?search_mode (see Figure 2).
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As a research blogger, I like to share Altmetrics badges for my publications, but none is available for Brandjacked via badge.dimensions.ai/details/doi/10.10520/ejc-crim_v38_n3_a2?domain=https://journals.co.za. Nor for a PlumX badge, searching with Branjacked's DOI value at https://plu.mx/plum/a/?doi=10.10520/ejc-crim_v38_n3_a2.
No automatic ORCID profile article update
Each of Brandjacked’s four authors have an Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) address. This is a 16-digit persistent digital identifier (e.g., 0000-0001-9566-8983) that uniquely identifies research-contributors all over the world. Like the DOI value does for research outputs, ORCID resolves name ambiguity. It links all research publications, datasets, and grants to an individual, regardless if their name or institution changes. Authors can set their ORCID profile to be automatically updated with research outputs that are linked to them. As at this post’s publication date, the Brandjacked article had not automatically been linked to any of its authors’ ORCID profiles.
Google Scholar links to a 404 error
The academic search engine, Google Scholar, is popular due to offering the widest automatic global indexing of scholars' works. Its account holders can create manual entries for their research outputs, or select pre-existing records featuring their author name. In Brandjacked’s case, I created a manual record in late December, since no record for this paper was available for selection (Figure 3). Since then, Google Scholar has come to list two versions of the article.
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| Figure 3.Screenshot of Two versions of Brandjacked on Google Scholar, 12 Feb 2026. |
The top version, which can be Saved and Cited, produced a '404 not found' error when clicked through to Acta Criminologica (Figure 4).
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| Figure 4.Screenshot of DOI not resolved from Google Scholar, 12 Feb 2026. |
Thinking that this may have been caused by the manual record I created featuring the initial DOI, I chose to delete the article from my record. Then went into Google Scholar trash and selected ‘Delete Forever’. However, the article available for manual selection (Figure 5) still links to a '404 not found' result.
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| Figure 5. Screenshot of Google Scholar manual selection of Brandjacked, 12 Feb 2026. |
Report a failed DOI link via doi.org
A manual entry created on ResearchGate (at researchgate.net/publication/398814505_Brandjacked_for_social_media_advert_fraud_Microcelebrities'_experiences_of_digital_crime_in_South_Africa) lists the correct DOI (Figure 6), but it also showed a '404 not found' error when attempting to link to the digital publication.
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| Figure 6.Screenshot of ResearchGate DOI being correct for Brandjacked, 12 Feb 2026. |
At least this page presented an option to report the failed DOI. So, I submitted this error report to DOI: "The article 'Brandjacked for social media advert fraud' should be available at this DOI. Related working URLs are: https://journals.co.za/doi/10.10520/ejc-crim_v38_n3_a2 & https://hdl.handle.net/10520/ejc-crim_v38_n3_a2. Thanks in advance for fixing this."
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| Figure 7. Screenshot of DOI error report for Brandjacked, 12 Feb 2026. |
As a shortcut for checking-and-reporting DOI errors, authors should open www.doi.org, then scroll down to the 'Try resolving a DOI name' section. There they can enter a DOI value to check it, and report a DOI URL address that fails in throwing a '404 not found' error.
![DOI Prefix [10.10520] Not Found.png](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDEzqL4beKD8zMIGkhp6iWGUj-JBn6HNu5Kxiuk7YzppaCG5je4xEOMY0xNKm7XroYFTLduiyNrxPPZprQV-PDNvHlEmgVh5_aY4jmLe47-YFoi1U09UxXqurCEexdlvbO6fPvuf-BQ5T4CPmPYtfHufuU5oqAXWrvsZyzt5Tl5uQim1lw1W7pTg-qI1sq/s2108/DOI%20Prefix%2010.10520%20Not%20Found.png "DOI Prefix [10.10520] Not Found.png") |
| Figure 8. Screenshot showing DOI Prefix 10.10520 Not Found error message, 12 Feb 2026. |
Just a few downloads...
Acta Criminologica’s ‘Open Access’ policy initially provides restricted access via the South African Bibliographic and Information Network (SABINET)'s archives. These are available via university libraries’ annual SABINET subscription for SABINET African Electronic Publications (SA_ePublications). There is a 12-month open access embargo from the date of publication/loading on the Criminological Society of Africa (CRIMSA)’s website.
Perhaps being published before the Christmas holidays in an access-restricted versus open-journal format contributed to Brandjacked only being downloaded five times in the first two months. But even achieving that readership is not been helped by a ghost-listing amidst a heavy stream of academic publications. As Trend MD reports, nearly 8,000 research articles are published each day. In this flood of information, the visibility of our niche publication is hampered through not being indexed in aggregators for academic (meta-)data or authorial content registries. Consequently, it is vital for scholars to work with the journal, their publisher, and co-authors to achieve work-arounds. Authors should also build awareness around remedying any root causes that undermine their visibility of their academic work.
Emailed the editor
Given that the landing page URL is throwing a '404 not found' error and the DOI is not resolving, it seemed likely that the error was a flaw on the publisher's end. In response, I wrote to the journal's editor requesting that the Crossref metadata be updated. I hoped that the journal’s production team could soon ensure that: (i) the landing page URL for the article is correctly mapped to its DOI. And that (ii) the metadata provided to Crossref and other aggregators could be updated to reflect a functional DOI link. As this issue impacted other articles in the Cybercrime special issue, it seemed crucial to fix for the visibility of all its authors’ articles.
Subsequent investigation spotlighted that the failure for the DOI to resolve actually applied to all articles in the journal: prior to 2017, the 'Acta Criminologica: African Journal of Criminology & Victimology' journal was known as 'Acta Criminologica: Southern African Journal of Criminology'. Its first issue started in 1988, and entering its first ever article's DOI produces exactly the same error as shown in Figure 8.
Feedback from the publisher
A product manager for content services at SABINET replied to the editor's query that the DOI link is not working as the journal is not using registered DOIs yet. The 10.10520 prefix is a "dummy" DOI that SABINET uses to ingest content. By contrast, the persistent link to resolve each article is at a fully-functioning https://hdl.handle.net address.
The product manager offered to reach out to the Google Scholar team to ask that they use the handle link rather than the DOI code, unless they use the complete URL. She also flagged that the DOI issue can only be addressed for future Acta Criminologica articles once their allocated actual DOIs are registered with Crossref. This issue relates to a broader problem around the visibility of African journals that Asubiaro and Onaolapo (2023) have spotlighted- their 'low representation in Crossref, a free indexing infrastructure that could be harnessed for building an African‐centric research indexing database, is concerning'. This paper flags how less than fifty percent of journals from Africa feature in Crossref.
Not being indexed there has an important knock-on effect, as it provides data for other bibliographic databases. These include Dimensions, The Lens and Scilit. In the Lens' case, it serves global scholarly records. These are compiled and harmonised from Crossref and PubMed, enhanced with OpenAlex and UnPaywall open access information, CORE full text and links to ORCID. Data from The Lens can be imported into ORCID records, allowing authors to synchronise their records.
A manual ORCID listing
In the absence of such synchronisation for Brandjacked, I could not select a DOI or handle.net address in ORCID for automatically linking to my record. Instead, I created a manual one. Its entry route provided an option to define both the DOI's 'identifier value' (10520/ejc-crim_v38_n3_a2) and the full identifier URL's address (https://hdl.handle.net/10520/ejc-crim_v38_n3_a2) (Figure 9). I asked my co-authors to add this manuscript to their ORCID records, which correctly resolves to the publisher's article landing page.
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| Figure 9. Screenshot of applying the handle.net identified in manual ORCID listing, 16 Feb 2026. |
However, each author was unable to select this listing for automatic addition, despite entering the assigned DOI index number, the full handle.net address (Figure 10) or the journal's URL.
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| Figure 10. Screenshot showing handle.net URL does not work for co-author selection via ORCID, 16 Feb 2026. |
Instead, I shared a screenshot of the details I used (Figure 11) which each author copied for adding the same details.
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| Figure 11. Screengrab of manual ORCID entry for co-authors to copy, 16 Feb 2026. |
By using the same DOI and handle.net address, we wanted to ensure that just one record was captured via ORCID for our paper (versus four separate records for all co-authors!).
A manual Academia.edu entry
Like ORCID, Academia.edu's manual field entries for an article support both the entry of the DOI value, and also related Links/URL (Figure 12). This contrasts to ResearchGate's support for just one DOI address.
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| Figure 12. Screenshot of adding handle.net entry to manual Academia.edu record, 16 Feb 2026. |
Cannot get (a) Kudos (addition)
Kudos is a networking platform designed to increase the visibility, reach, and impact of published research It supports scholars with explaining their work in plain language, and adding salient context. In theory, a DOI, article title or recent manual entry on ORCID should support Kudos with finding 'Brandjacked for social media advert fraud'. However, none of the three searches worked (Figure 13).
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| Figure 13. Screenshot of Kudos search options - DOI, text search & ORCID, 16 Feb 2026. |
I emailed Kudos' support team to flag this issue, asking if there was an alternate route for authors to add a publication. They replied that Kudos currently depends on the entry of DOIs: 'Please be aware that we do plan to create more options to add a publication to Kudos in the future and this is on our product roadmap. In the meantime we recommend that you kindly contact your publisher and ask them to send published work metadata to Crossref so it is more discoverable, and appears in Kudos and other online services' (email correspondence, 4 March, 2026),
Who is responsible for submitting to Crossref?
The primary responsibility for submitting and maintaining Crossref entries typically lies with the publisher in being formal Crossref members. CRIMSA publishes Acta Criminologica : African Journal of Criminology & Victimology. The editor ensures that high-quality metadata (such as ORCIDs and funding info) is received from authors before manuscript approval. CRIMSA would then be responsible for submitting accepted articles' bibliographic metadata (including URLs and references, plus registering DOIs), then ensuring this information remains up-to-date. The publisher handles the technical side of generating "Crossref XML" files, or using deposit tools.Like many small organisations though, CRIMSA's office bearers may be stretched across many roles. So, not able to prioritise learning how to do Crossref submissions as a new responsibility, let alone find the time to do them. The extra funds to pay for such work may also not be available.
In the near future, CRIMSA's academic journal does plan to submit metadata to Crossref for new articles. I have encouraged Acta Criminologica's editor to organise that its full archive becomes retroactively registered with Crossref. The estimated cost of $0.15 per article’s uploaded meta-data should hopefully not prove a showstopper. Supplying the correct metadata for all articles will benefit this journal's visibility, and hopefully support not just its altmetrics results being listed, but also Acta Criminologica being listed on journal portals used to rank and compare academic journals (and country-level scientific output). Notably, the free Scimagojr and Scilit portals.
Conclusion
After overcoming the challenges of review, revisions, and achieving a digital publication, academic authors may face a new challenge- following up that their publications are well-indexed. As this post illustrates, this must not be assumed. Rather authors must check that their article's DOI identifier does indeed link to their article's publication page. And that their paper's social media impact and amplification is being correctly reflected via that page's Altmetrics badge.
If there is a problem, it is most likely to be taking place in the earliest phase of the Research Data Lifecycle (RDLC)- this broad concept is used to describe the "cradle-to-grave" journey of research data:
In terms of sharing research outputs, it includes curation of metadata that is standardised, ensuring outputs are both disseminated, and findable via academic search engine optimisation (ASEO). And that the article's reach, amplification and media interest can be measured via Altmetric statistics.
In the case of our article, the DOI indexing flaw lay in phase 1 of output sharing. The journal does not supply metadata for its articles to the academic metadata aggregator, Crossref. Instead, the journal's publisher setup a temporary DOI as a workaround. While this may work as a stopgap measure, it poses a major obstacle for scholars keen to share the work with centralised registries in phase 2, since each co-author must manually create an ORCID record. In phase 3, academic aggregators (such as Google Scholar) may direct users to a 'page not found' response on doi.org or from the journal's website. In phase 4, researchers may face a similar problem on academic social networks (such as ResearchGate) which require an accurate DOI link. For phase 5, the ability of altmetrics services to track an article's amplification, reach and media interest is scuppered. By contrast, the article's citations are still tracked.
However, until this happens, authors keen to share their Acta Criminologica publications via their scholarly profiles and social networks must do a lot of extra work. My colleagues and I followed work-arounds to address the placeholder DOI index information in phases 2 to 4. These included listing their article's and/or handle.net address in manual entries on ORCID's centralised registry, academic aggregators (e.g. Google Scholar or Bielefeld Academic Search Engine). Plus, shifting to using the handle.net address in academic social network posts. These work-arounds required extra labour from the four authors, three of whom are independent and not formally affiliated to any university. As the journal publisher already covers the journal's Crossref fees, such extra work can readily be avoided. Hopefully, the journal will put aside the resources necessary for generating the required XML metadata, and for depositing its full archive, plus new publications via Crossref's record manager.
Related suggestions
Journal publishers and editorial teams can help their authors upfront by being transparent about what the opportunities and limitations of their journal's current indexing are in relation to sharing publications online. Plus, publishers should provide advice to authors for how these strengths and weaknesses support, or limit, the online visibility and potential amplification opportunities for their new works. For example, in Acta Criminologica : African Journal of Criminology & Victimology's case, it has several strengths, such as indexing works in the reputable databases of SABINET and African Journals OnLine (AJOL). However, its metadata is not currently submitted to Crossref, nor does the journal appear in Scopus title lists. As described regarding Crossref, this requires authors to make several work-arounds to ensure their articles become visible via centralised registries and academic aggregators. Authors must also accept that they cannot source altmetrics for their work, and cannot use services solely reliant on DOI link entries.
Publishers and editorial teams who provide transparency about their journals' academic indexing issues, could also make public their plans to resolve them. This would be performing a helpful service, not just for their authors, but also for potential case-study research in an area for which there seems to be a dearth of detailed local descriptions to learn from. With less than half of African journals being indexed in Crossref, there must be systemic problems preventing their indexing. Learning in detail from African journal publishers and editors on why this is the case, plus how it might be addressed on the ground, would seem a worthwhile gap for scholars to research, and close.
N.B. Kindly add a comment below if you have any related suggestions or other feedback...
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https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9566-8983 